Student rapper's lyrics have 'positive message'

Many rappers rap about violence, material objects, women and money. Bloomington rap artist and IU senior Dee Greene stays away from those kinds of lyrics.

“TheRealDeeGreene” has more than 470,000 views on his YouTube channel and his lyrics contain no foul language and promote a positive message.

Greene’s inspiration is the 2010 film, “The Social Network.”

“I thought it would be cool if I could do all my own stuff online, that way I wouldn’t have to pay someone for album covers, websites, blogs or anything like that,” he said. “It’s another way to make money, plus it’s a great school as far as job placement goes.”

Greene said his affection for rap music began in the fourth grade while listening to one of his biggest musical influences of the era, Bow Wow.

“I was like, ‘Dang, a little kid can do that,’” Greene said. “I didn’t think that was
possible.”

By that time, he had already begun writing lyrics and getting a feel for the art of recording.

“Obviously, I didn’t have too many software opportunities back then,” Greene said. “I did have one of those little cassette tapes that you could record on, though.”

Now, Greene’s influences include popular artists such as Kanye West, Dom Kennedy and Drake.

He said he appreciates their work because it is heavily based on their own thoughts and ideas and differs from the topics covered by many rap artists.

“Even if I don’t necessarily agree with them, they rap about things that they care about,” Greene said.

Greene said “Cool To Be Good,” which began production last November, is his first professional mixtape. He previously created two other mixtapes.

He deleted them from the Internet, though, because they didn’t compare in sound quality.

“I was really not even looking to do a mixtape at the time,” he said. “I had rapped before that, but I really just stuck with making beats.”

Greene said he had the chance to work with a sound engineer on his latest work, which greatly improved the sound quality compared to his previous work.

“It was an actual process that took time, instead of it being a week of just doing whatever,” he said.

One of the hardest aspects about making the mixtape was working with multiple people, Greene said.

Greene’s friend and fellow rapper, Bryce McCloud, was one of the people he collaborated with on “Cool To Be Good.” McCloud, a junior and economics major, said he considers Greene to be an exceptional talent.

“I have never seen somebody more prepared to want to be friendly in a collaboration and also be prepared to do long and hard work,” McCloud said.

McCloud said he believes that “Cool To Be Good” has the potential to boost Greene’s music career.

“I think had he been a more established artist that mixtape alone would have been pivotal in the underground rap scene and possibly the mainstream rap scene,” McCloud said. “The day I met Dee, I absolutely knew that he would be discovered, major or minor label.”

Greene said another difficulty was creating lyrics he felt were adequate enough to be recorded while not rapping about women and money.

“It’s easy to rap about that stuff,” he said. “Once you start doing that it’s easy to get used to it.”

Greene said the mixtape does not support negative behavior and it is against the norm by producing a mixtape with a positive message.

“I’m really just telling people to do whatever they want to do,” he said. “You don’t have to do bad things to fit in with everyone else.”